the ghost of the georgia peach

Good news for Jet City baseball fans: Ichiro is here through 2012.

While I'm not a huge Mariners fan (go Twins!), I love baseball, and Ichiro is probably my favorite ballplayer to watch. I would have been disappointed to see him leave this city for Boston or New York, two teams that seem to chew up all of the talent in baseball come contract-time. God, I hate the AL East.

Ichiro plays an older style of ball, a style perfected by Ty Cobb before the homerun overtook the game. It's a style where hustle, speed, and guile (and in Cobb's case, violence) earn one base at a time, and power is less valuable than a good eye, a smooth swing, and swift feet. Ballplayers like Ichiro are a dying breed in the Majors.

Boston and New York can keep Manny and A-Rod. I'll be happy watching Ichiro swat Texas-leaguers into right and beat out infield singles for the next four years. It's the way the game was meant to be played.

I'll write more about why I hate the homerun later.

from the list of things I wish I'd written

"Guns & Cigarettes"
by Atmosphere

Rappers steppin' to me
They wanna get some
But most of them should go and try to boost they monthly income
Speaking over beats is the only time I feel complete
I don't hear the weak and I don't fear defeat

So what you got?
Connect the dots, I'll raise the pot
Remove the blood clot from the brain of hip hop
The name remains in tip-top shape
I'm still the back rapper scapegoat in the aim of their hate

I came in late, took a chair in the rear
But my classmates were unaware how long I'd really been there
My peers have been held back for years, holding back the tears
Everybody knows our name like we was the cast from "Cheers"

So here's to the good times, tonight is mighty special
So fasten your seatbelts, cause I'm gonna launch this vessel
Ain't gonna land until I'm bigger than Expo
And bigger than ecstasy and bigger than techno

But I'm bigger than Jesus and bigger than wrestling
Bigger than the Beatles and bigger than breast implants
I'm gonna be the biggest thing to hit these little kids
Bigger than guns, bigger than cigarettes

A few years ago an ex-girl of mine
Asked me to keep her name out of my rhymes
So I said this rhyme that I'm about to say
It came from the heart and it went this way:

Go to hell girl, you make me sick!
I hope your new boyfriend gets cancer in his dick
What the fuck makes you think I'd put your name on my record?
there, now I feel a lot better

You know what?

I ain't drank a forty since I became old enough to drink
Not caught up in what the fuck these people think
Cause when I die they're gonna find the missing link
But tonight I'm gonna vomit it in the kitchen sink

I'm suprised more of y'all don't get hit by cars
Missing your surroundings, staring at the stars
I'm lonely without a woman that wants to spar
That's why I spend so much time in these bars

Drunk poolside, screaming, "Do or die!"
Looking at the water I ask it, "Who am I?"
Saw my reflection, Yes! I'm super fly!
And as you can guess again, I'm too damn high

(What'd they say to you?)

But they said, "Drop dead."
I can't, I got a lot left
More than just another arrogant, asshole pot-head
In the top ten, who you love to hear on tracks
Smiling for the camera while I surf upon your ear wax

This beer's flat and she kisses like a stripper
I'm coming to terms with my status as a drifter
Girl, I'm only in this town for one night
And these neon lights are keeping me distracted from my plight

I feel like a legend on a leash
Making an effort to break every piece that I can reach
Yeah, I got something to say, and even more to teach
But first let me scrape these feces from my cleats

Standing on the roof, complaining to the moon
The only time I tell the truth is when I'm naked in my bedroom
Soon I'm gonna reap the harvest of my struggles
But from now on, y'all can call me sluggles

Bigger than Jesus
Bigger than wrestling
Bigger than the Beatles
Bigger than breast implants

Bigger than guns, bigger than cigarettes

identity politics

From Sadly, No!:

The organizing principle behind right-wing rhetoric is simple human spite: The political ideology of its rhetoricians is that somewhere in America, at all times, someone is stealing their parking spot or taking the last jelly donut, and someday there'll be hell to pay. Someday, as it were, a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

The Spite Caucus isn't particular about its methods. The more that 'liberals' revere, for instance, the Bill of Rights, the more they attack it under one pretense or another, but ultimately for that reason alone. It gives them the joy that a jerky twelve-year-old gets from jumping up and down on another kid's sand castle. . .

I was discussing something similar with the Evil Cat of Hell a few weeks ago; that right wingers tend to oppose or support people and organizations more than the ideas espoused by people and organizations. Sen. Clinton could be calling for privatizating the school system, health care savings accounts, and bombing Iran back to the stone age, and the usual pack of braying hyenas on the right would still invent droll puns on her name and call her a Socialist simply because she is Sen. Clinton, and a Democrat.

Which isn't to say that this type of thing doesn't exist on the political left (who have their own set of silly and annoying tics), but this type sillines really is most noticible on the right.

Also, I recommend reading Sadly, No! on a daily basis. It's some of the sharpest polictal humor on the internets.